Bad Santa 2

“Bad Santa 2” is vulgar, nasty and offensive, but it has flawed aspects also.

The sequel to perhaps the funniest movie of the 2000s finds sleazy drunk Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) joining his elfin compadre (Tony Cox) and, this time, his foulmouthed criminal mother (Kathy Bates) on a mission to rip off the corrupt head of a Christmas charity in Chicago. There, everyone is joined by Thurman Merman, the not-so-smart kid from the first movie, again played with sweet obliviousness by Brett Kelly, who sings “Silent Night” like an angel, albeit a castrated one.

Like its 2003 predecessor, “Bad Santa 2” is so raunchy, you may feel the urge to wash your ears out with soap, not that the language is the only dirty thing about it. There’s a spirited reprise of the now-iconic yuletide greeting “[Make love to] me, Santa,” this time uttered by Christina Hendricks as Willie’s new girl.

A lot of this is funny, and a lot of it isn’t. Screenwriters Johnny Rosenthal and Shauna Cross act as though they’re being paid by the dirty word, cramming virtually every conversation with so many insults and gross-out jokes at the expense of plot development that the movie becomes a surprisingly long sit. It plays like an imitation more than a follow-up — as if it were written by adolescents who have just discovered swear words or as a tribute act to a so-so insult comic — say, Andrew Dice Clay. Many of the best scenes in the original (written by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, now two of the hottest writers in the business) weren’t even especially profane.

Moreover, the “Bad [Whatever]” idea has gotten a little stale over the years, and Willie, with his licentious, thieving coarseness, doesn’t seem as outré as he once did — not now that we’re preparing for a Bad Santa presidency.